On Wednesday 14 October 2009, Rick Thomas wrote:
> Let me see if I've got this right...
>
> The installer being "based on" (e.g.) Sid/unstable means that the
> active components of the installer CDs (the parts that do the
> installing, not the parts that will be installed) come from the
> current Sid/unstable toolset. It is possible (even, sometimes, done)
> for an installer to be "based on" testing/Squeeze, or even stable/Lenny.
Daily builds, both D-I and CD, are always based on D-I components from
unstable, but install testing.
Weekly CD builds *normally* use D-I components from testing and install
testing. But as long as there is no D-I release for squeeze, the weekly
builds also use D-I components from unstable (as using the images that are
currently in testing would only result in garbage).
> Regardless of what the installer is "based on", it should be able to
> install components from any of the current distributions: stable/
> Lenny, testing/Squeeze, unstable/Sid.
> Is this correct?
We try to keep the installer compatible with the previous release. So, the
installer for Squeeze (whether based on unstable or testing), should also
be able to install Lenny, but may not install Etch correctly.
There has been very little attention to this aspect recently though, so
whether Lenny still installs correctly is not certain.
The installer for an older release is never guaranteed to install a newer
release correctly, even if in practise it may do so. However, you're quite
likely not to benefit from all improvements in the new release.
> If so, there remains the question of were the passive components (i.e.
> things being installed) of the installer CDs/DVDs/etc... are drawn from.
That's fairly simple (or not).
- Passive components (debs) and are always taken from the target release.
- Active components are D-I images and udebs, and there is a distinction
between those:
- if the installer is based on unstable:
- D-I images are taken from daily builds (which are built from
unstable) [1]
- udebs are taken from unstable [2]
- if the installer is based on testing:
- D-I images are taken from testing on the mirrors [3]
- udebs are taken from testing [4]
Note that we don't really use the D-I images for unstable on the mirrors.
(With one exception: the "sid_d-i" daily built CD images; but those are
only used during a *very* short window for pre-release testing, and
recently that has just been skipped as an effect of suboptimal release
management.)
> Is there an established policy on any of this?
Yes. It is all coded in the D-I build system and in debian-cd.
Cheers,
FJP
For i386 this is:
[1]http://people.debian.org/~joeyh/d-i/images/daily/
[2]http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/unstable/main/debian-installer/binary-i386/
[3]http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/main/installer-i386/current/
[4]http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/main/debian-installer/binary-i386/